Part 15 (1/2)

The movement was but a quiver, dying away as soon as it came. I expected him, at the very least, to turn and open his eyes. But he did nothing of the kind. My impatience returned.

'Twickenham!' I thought it safer to address him by that name. Walls have ears; especially, I fancy, in hotels. 'Twickenham! Confound it, man, are you playing the fool with me again?'

No response. Concluding that this was a game which the gentleman before me intended to play in his own fas.h.i.+on, I awaited the issue of events. If he thought it necessary to keep up his character of dying man, and practise the lights and shadows of the role with me as audience, it was out of my power to prevent him. Yet as I watched how, bit by bit, he seemed to return to life; how long the process lasted; and how small the amount of vitality which he returned to seemed to be; I found myself in the curious position of being unable to decide where the sham began and the reality ended. Turning on to his back, apparently with difficulty, he gazed up with what was an astonis.h.i.+ngly good imitation of an unseeing gaze.

'Well? As the street boys have it, I hope you'll know me when you see me again. You do it uncommonly well. The only comment I have to make, if you'll excuse my making it, is that you do it too well.'

What seemed a glimmer of consciousness stole over his skeleton countenance. It lighted up.

'Doug!' he said.

Mr. Babbacombe had not struck me as being corpulent, but it mystified me to think what he had done with the balance of his flesh within the twenty-four hours since I had seen him last. He looked as if he had lost stones; suggesting the possession of a secret for which certain jockeys of my acquaintance would give him all they possess. The voice was excellent: cracked and broken, like that of a man whose physical force is nearly spent.

'Would you mind calling me Mr. Howarth when we are alone?'

'Call you--what? See you----. Might as well ask you--call me--Marquis of Twickenham.'

'I am quite willing, when we are in private, to call you Mr.

Babbacombe.'

'Call me--what? Mr.--Doug, you're drunk.'

'As usual, you credit me with a condition of mental imbecility for which no degree of drunkenness of which I ever heard could adequately account.'

'What--you talking about? Doug, I'm pretty bad.'

'You seem to be. I've brought the five hundred pounds which you stipulated I should bring if you were not to recover.'

'Five hundred pounds? Doug, I haven't seen that amount of money--Lord knows when.'

'No? Then you shall see it now. Here it is--fifty tens. I thought you would prefer to have the notes all small.'

I placed them between the wasted fingers, which still remained outside the coverlet. They just closed on them, but that was all. His eyes closed too.

'Too late.'

'Too late? What do you mean?'

'What's the use--money to me now.'

'You can have it buried with you.'

'Yes--I can. Doug, why do you speak like that?'

'Mr. Babbacombe, might I ask you not to be so thorough?'

An expression of surprise lighted up his features.

'He's wandering.'

'I did not gather, from our conversation yesterday, that it was part of your scheme to pretend to be dying even when we were alone.'